70 years after Independence, we recall the trauma of the division of a country and culture - and of homes, families and lives. Rehana Hyder narrates the story of her family
“My mother was a young woman from Lahore, a scholar of Persian; married to an officer from the British Indian Army, commissioned from the IMA Dehra Dun. After active service, he had recently been selected for service in Japan in the Indian Foreign Service after being interviewed by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He was being trained with his prospective colleagues in Delhi.
He belonged to one of Jullunder’s Rajput families, settled there in East Punjab for five generations after migrating – on converting to Islam – from their original home Jaipur in Rajasthan.
The decision to migrate again – this time to Pakistan from India – was taken after a bomb exploded in their courtyard. So they set off for Lahore in different groups, in varying ways.
Ruhafza and Tariq Osman Hyder in the IAS in-training officers' residential complex, New Delhi
A Dakota plane was learnt to be taking off from Delhi. My father, Sajjad Hyder, made sure that my mother Ruhafza and their little son Tariq Osman were on board. His dear friend Dilip had, like others, urged my father to send the family to safety urgently. My mother’s wedding jewelry was given into Uncle Dilip’s faithful safekeeping and returned intact after Partition.
Begum Tayabji, later to settle with her own family in Karachi, would recall her travelling companions thus:
“I was seated on that frenetic flight next to a lovely young woman – a slip of a girl – and her toddler son. She was clearly distraught. To calm her and distract her, I said, ‘I see Alhamdulillah you and your little boy are fine. What about your other family?’ She nodded emphatically, ‘Yes!’
‘And your husband?’
Again, ‘Yes!’
‘So you see’, encouraged thus far, I proceeded more confidently, ‘Soon you would all be reunited. Shortly we should be in Lahore. There I, for example, would rejoin my family in Mayo Gardens’ (the Railways residential estate).
"My mother's wedding jewelry was given into Uncle Dilip's faithful safekeeping and returned intact after Partition"
‘Really?’ my neighbour exclaimed, at once transformed. ‘Why, that’s where my Rasheed Bhai lives!’
Now it was my turn to be surprised. ‘Rasheed Zaman? Arre Bibi, he and his family are close friends of ours. So you are his sister Ruhafza?!”
Thus went my mother and elder brother’s maiden voyage to their new country. All around them was the maelstrom and mayhem of Partition, the stuff of suffering for millions and – perhaps deservedly, perhaps not – of nightmares for those who led India and Pakistan.
My mother had, as a girl, seen that suspense and panic. She also witnessed touching neighbourhood loyalty in her parents’ area of residence in Lahore, Model Town, when the elders – Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Christian – all formed a barricade at the gateway of this truly ‘model’ settlement to defend their families, friends and homes from a marauding band of Sikhs from Bhabra.
Group photo of Indian Administrative Services officers in training, Metcalfe House, New Delhi - the author's father Sajjad Hyder is second from right, seated
On the 14th of August 1947 my father and two colleagues from the first PFS batch raised Pakistan’s flag as Third Secretaries of our newly established High Commission in Delhi, which later became the ambassadorial residence: Gul e Ra’ana (Begum Liaquat Ali’s house) near India Gate.
The Mission worked day and night to secure sanctuary for prospective Pakistanis and – as soon as possible – their safe passage to Pakistan. I recall my father telling me that on average 20 babies were born each day on those premises.
He returned to Delhi as Deputy High Commissioner in the late 1950s. We lived in Friends’ Colony, modeled quite literally on Model Town Lahore. This was a period of peace and quiet, my parents retouching base with old friends from Jullunder, Delhi, the IMA, IAS, IFS, and Lahore College (including Teji Bachchan); and Tariq attending prestigious St Columba’s School.
My father was posted there once again in the late 1960s as Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India, when we lived in that regal residence described above. There my mother arranged many memorable functions around the likes of Faiz Sahib, Begum Akhtar and the Sabri Brothers. And so she, my father and Tariq reconnected with fond friends. But it was also where, come 1971, my younger brother Saad Salman and I had to leave The British School as our principal could ‘no longer guarantee our safety’, and where we were placed under house arrest on the 3rd of December. But that is another story – about another Partition and the birth of another nation in our stormy South Asian subcontinent, that of Bangladesh.
Returning, however, to the Partition of 1947, the devastation of migration and resettlement after so long, for entire families, communities and populations was poignantly summed up at age three by Tariq who confided to his beloved grandmother, ‘Beji, Jullunder tou gaya!’ (Jullunder is gone!)”
